Sophie laid on her thin mattress while she gazed at the ceiling. The same stains were still there, they were there everyday.  There weren’t maids in the orphanage who came and scrubbed the ceiling, so, the stains stayed. She liked them though, finding shapes to pass the time that seemed to go on forever.

“Sophie!” Eileen shrieked.  It was her crazy excited shriek.  She was standing over at the window.  “It’s snowing!”

Sophie walked over to her and gasped at the sparkly flurries falling to the ground.  They melting the second they hit the Manhattan sidewalks but it didn’t matter.

“It’s beautiful” Sophie whispered.

All the other 8 girls that shared our room gathered around the window

“Hey! Don’t you girls have chores to be doing? I assigned new chores this morning and I expect them done by this evening.” Ms Janet poked her head in our room to see the commotion.

“Ms. Janet, it’s snowing!”  Eileen told her.

“Does snow have anything to do with you girls doing your chores?” Silence fell over us.  “Didn’t think so.”

She stormed out of the room, but we heard a sigh following and she waltzed back in.

“I suppose if you get your chores down before it’s dark, you can go into the snow.” She smiled at all of our excited faces.

Ms Janet had a tough outside, but deep down she was a kind woman and she cared for us.  She was the closest thing any of us had ever had to a mother. Sophie walked into the office and looked at the list for that day.

Eileen and Sophie: Sweep Bedroom Floors, wash windows of assigned bedroom

Eh, I thought, could be worse.  Eileen and Sophie split up and conquered the tasks within two hours.  It was just around sunset and it was still flurrying outside. Eileen practically dragged Sophie outside to the poor patch of grass behind the orphanage they like to call a backyard.  

They caught snowflakes on their tongues and giggled at how the flakes fell on each other’s hair.  It was the most fun they had had in ages and neither of them wanted it to ever end. Sophie and Eileen hadn’t seen snowflakes in the longest time. Even just going outside to see them, made them feel like our lives were a little closer to normal children, though they knew they were different.

Soon, the sun fell and it was time for us to go inside.  They each took a piece of bread as our “dinner” and went to our room. They shared a mattress because space was limited in the orphanage.  The cold had made them tired so they decided to go to sleep earlier. Besides, there was nothing else to do. All they had were the other girls in the orphanage. Especially each other. Sophie and Eileen had been best friends ever since Eileen arrived at the orphanage but even they got tired of talking to each other at times. They did everything together so there was nothing to tell that the other didn’t know. Sophie closed her eyes after spending some time starting at the elephant stain. She finally drifted to sleep.

She woke up the next morning, concerned when Eileens feet weren’t next to hers. Sophie started breathing heavier and heavier when she finally bolted upright. Eileen was one of the latest sleepers, and if she had gotten up early Sophie would have known because she sleeps so light.

Don’t panic Sophie, don’t panic. She told herself.

She got up and went to the bathroom, but it was unoccupied. Sophie asked Ms. Janet if she had seen Eileen, but all she did was shake her head and get back to making chore lists. She searched the whole entire orphanage TWICE, but never found Eileen.

Where, oh where was her best friend?  

Sophie put her head down and started to cry tears of longing. She imagined all of the horrible things that could be happening to Eileen at the moment. She attempted to calm herself with the knowledge that Eileen was one of the strongest kids she knew. Sophie decided she needed to look one more time and ran around the orphanage screaming for Eileen.

The other girls started to notice Sophie and there soon was a commotion inside of your run down orphanage. Time started to pass, days, weeks. It was two weeks later and nothing from Eileen. Ms. Janet was hiding something from the girls, and Sophie noticed. Many times Sophie tried to confront Ms. Janet about what she was keeping from them but Ms. Janet never told anything. She simply replied not to worry, that everything was under control when it really wasn’t; that she was ‘fine’ and was merely having some issues with her back. Eileen had told Sophie many times about how she didn’t love the orphanage, and it made Sophie wonder if she had run away but that didn’t make any sense. What reason would Eileen have to run away? And if at all why alone? Why hadn’t she taken Sophie with her? Soon three weeks passed and a package arrived at the door. The box didn’t have a label and it was only a post it note on top of a flash drive that said it was for Ms. Janet. Sophie knew she had to do something about it and took it back to her room instead of passing the package on to its desired recipient. She hid it under her pillow, waiting for the right time to find out what was on the flash drive.

That night, Sophie snuck out of her room and into Ms. Janet's office. On top of the glass table she kept a computer, it’s bright white screen glaring at Sophie, possibly warning her of what was to come. She went ahead anyway and plugged it into the computer, waiting for the file to load. When it did, Sophie opened it without hesitation. It was a video, and when she started watching she couldn’t breathe, and yet she couldn’t look away.

There was a man in a black hoodie and black pants holding scissors. He took a bunch of Eileen's hair and cut it. He gave Eileen a terrible new hairstyle. Eileen was sleeping? How could she not feel any of this?! I soon realized that she wasn’t sleeping! She was drugged. At the end of the video it showed a birth record. Sophie soon heard footsteps but before she could run or hide,  Ms. Janet came in. She was shocked and very hurt that Sophie was not sleeping. She was also enraged, however, when she saw what was on the computer the rage turned into fear.

“WHO SENT YOU THIS?!”

“NO ONE!” replied Sophie, shaken with fear of her caretaker.

“HOW DID IT GET HERE THEN?!”

“It came in the package. It was addressed to you but I know that you are hiding something and I know that you are not going to tell me, so I looked into the flash drive. Now you tell me, what does all of this mean?! What are you hiding?” asked Sophie, enraged that Ms. Janet would not tell her the truth.

“Excuse me young lady you are not old enough to ask me questions. GO TO BED NOW!”

“Not until you tell me what you’re hiding!” Ms. Janet and Sophie were both shocked by the sudden outburst that Sophie had just had. She had never had one of those before! She never even had the courage to talk back to Ms. Janet before. However Sophie was determined to find her best friend.

Ms. Janet knew that her secret would come out sooner or later. She told Sophie the truth. How she had an ex-husband and that they had a kid together. She told Sophie how her son had gone rogue and started to take drugs. She kicked him out of the house and soon divorced her husband. She had no place to stay and therefore she started to work at the orphanage. Her son never moved on from the fact that his own mother had kicked him out and therefore he was determined to get his revenge. There were orphans who had gone missing before, but Ms. Janet never wanted to believe that her son could have done something like this. Now she was sure that it was her son, Isaac, who had kidnapped all these innocent children. He knew how much she loved these kids, probably more than she loved Isaac. This upset him so now he is out to get his revenge. Ms. Janet knew that there was an Isaac Yolen that lived nearby but was it truly her Isaac??

The next day she sent Sophie to go distract Isaac while she went and scoped out the house. Sophie was dressed as a girl scout selling cookies. Then, Ms. Janet sneaked through the back door and went into the house. She looked at the kitchen and noticed that all the knives were missing.  She went into the basement and she found Eileen tied up in a chair. Next to her there was a table that had knives and scissors on it. The door slammed shut. She heard footsteps coming down the stairs. Where was she going to hide now? The entire room was empty except for the table and the chair. Who was it? Was today her last day on this earth? Her heartbeat quickened as she turned around slowly.

A tall, thin man with a patchy beard and pale skin stood just by the entrance to the small room. The same hoodie from the video shadowed his face but even so, his pale skin was visible. His arms were very weak looking, but the way he held a large knife showed that he was not to be trifled with.